The Barbican has revealed a typically eclectic selection of shows that comprise its autumn season, with performers including Michael Clark, Slung Low, Told By An Idiot and Blue Boy Entertainment.
The season, which runs from September to December, features returns for Barbican regulars Cloud Gate Dance Theatre Of Taiwan, which presents the UK premiere of its newest piece Wind Shadow, and Michael Clark, who returns to the venue after the success of the three-year Stravinsky Project.
There are also return visits for Slung Low – currently performing Last Seen as part of the Almeida Summer Festival – which will present a new site-specific show in one of the Barbican’s car parks, and Blue Boy Entertainment, which revives its successful hip hop version of Pied Piper for Christmas.
Acrobat, clown and magician James Thiérrée who, though often found performing in London, has never done so at the Barbican, makes his debut in the season.
The 2009 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award-winner Levantes Dance Theatre is another Barbican debutant, as is Told By An Idiot, which presents The Fahrenheit Twins, in which the company’s Artistic Directors Paul Hunter and Hayley Carmichael perform together in a two-hander for the first time. It is directed by Matthew Dunster, whose Troilus And Cressida runs at Shakespeare’s Globe this summer.
Dutch company Toneelgroep Amsterdam makes its first London appearance with the UK premiere of its ambitious six-hour Roman Tragedies, which comprises versions of Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony And Cleopatra performed consecutively.
The Barbican autumn also includes a cabaret performance devised specifically for four to 10 year olds, American company The TEAM performing Edinburgh hit Architecting, and, as part of Polska! Year, Polish theatre collective Teatr ZAR performs in the UK for the first time, staging Gospels Of Childhood in both the Pit and the nearby St Giles church.
MA